CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Cuban American Jorge Mursuli is livid over how he says President Bush forced him to break a promise made at his mother's deathbed.
He vowed to her to send money and medicine to his aging aunt still living in Fidel Castro's Cuba. But Bush's new policies restricting travel and remittances to the island -- a move aimed at further isolating its communist leader -- have stifled that goodwill gesture.
Mursuli, who grew up in a Republican household, says Bush is playing politics with his culture's close-knit family ties, appealing to older hard-line Cuban exiles who want Castro overthrown at any cost. He says the president's choice comes at a price: Mursuli, 43, won't be voting for Bush in November.
Recent voter surveys suggest that the solid support for Bush among Cuban Americans may be slipping a bit, especially among the young.
"Family is the center of who we Cubans are," Mursuli said. "You could be my best friend, but come between me and my family and there's no choice there for me. It's over. I'll push you out of the way. Because blood is thicker than politics."
In 2000, when Bush won Florida by 537 votes -- a victory that carried him to the White House -- he garnered 82% of 450,000 votes cast by Cuban Americans.
A poll by a Democratic group released last week showed Bush still significantly ahead of Sen. John F. Kerry among Cuban Americans, but by a lesser margin: 70% said they supported the president, 19% his Democratic rival; 11% were undecided. The results have given Kerry supporters hope in a state pollsters say remains too close to call.
Another poll conducted in August by the William C. Velasquez Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit Latino think tank, showed that support for Bush among Cuban Americans had dropped to 66%.
The most recent poll, commissioned by the New Democrat Network, which is targeting Latino voters, found that Bush's support remained strongest among Cuban Americans who arrived before the 1980 Mariel boatlift, when Castro allowed more than 120,000 residents -- including hard-core criminals -- to flee the island.
That older wave of refugees is considered the most politically active in the community and remains vehemently anti-Castro.
Those who arrived later or who were born in this country tend to favor Kerry, according to polling done this summer by the New Democrat Network. That poll showed Kerry leading Bush, 58% to 32%, among Cuban Americans born in the United States; among those arriving after 1980, Kerry led, 40% to 29%, with 31% undecided.
